The Gateway Hotels and Resorts, part of the Taj Group of Hotels, is on an expansion mode. If implementation goes as planned, it will have ten more hotels operational in the country in the next two years.

In an interaction with The Hindu, after the formal launch of The Gateway Hotel Lakeside here on Monday, Chief Operating Officer of The Gateway Hotels and Resorts Prabhat Verma said that so far 22 hotels were operational across the country.

“In a span of one year, another four hotels in Chennai, Kolkata, Raipur and Hyderabad will come up, and six more are scheduled for opening next year. We have plans to take the total tally to 45 to 50 in three years ,” Mr. Verma said.

Mr. Verma said that his vision was to take the tally to 100 hotels in the next six

“We are scouting for properties wherever there is a growing market. It is not that we are focussing only tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

“It can be any place as long as it works out to be a sustainable one,” he said.

Hotel concept

He said that the ‘gateway hotel’ concept was mainly aimed at catering to the needs of leisure and business travellers.

He also admitted that the competition in the segment was huge and that the company would be comfortable with an occupancy rate of 60 per cent. The Gateway Hotel Lakeside, Hubli, is the fourth Gateway branded hotel in Karnataka, in addition to the existing hotels in Bangalore, Mangalore and Chikmagalur.

General Manager Dharmesh Cariappa and Chef Natarajan elaborated on the distinctive features of the new hotel.